DFS Cybersecurity Symposium: Spotlight on Small Business

Kevin Thomas was elected in 2018 to represent the 6th District in Nassau County, becoming the first Indian-American in New York history to serve in the State Senate. He currently serves as Chairman of the Consumer Protection Committee and sits on the Banks, Finance, Health, Internet & Technology, Judiciary, and Local Government Committees. Prior to his election, Kevin served as an attorney and civic leader who spent his career fighting for families across New York State.

In the Senate, Kevin has successfully championed legislation to fight discrimination, protect consumers’ private information from exploitation, expand economic opportunities, and combat the growing student loan debt crisis. As Chairman of the Consumer Protection Committee, Kevin has been the driving force behind several groundbreaking efforts to strengthen consumer privacy rights, including the New York Privacy Act (NYPA), the first comprehensive data privacy bill of its kind to be introduced in the state. The NYPA features an expansive consumer “bill of rights” and sets forth provisions for businesses to manage personal data responsibly and lawfully.

Assembly Member Nily Rozic represents New York’s 25th District, which spans the Eastern portion of Queens, including the communities of Flushing, Queensboro Hill, Hillcrest, Fresh Meadows, Oakland Gardens, Bayside, and Douglaston. Upon her election in 2012, Assembly Member Rozic became the youngest woman in the state legislature and the first woman ever to represent the 25th District.

Assembly Member Rozic is currently the chair of the Assembly’s Committee on Consumer Affairs and Protection which works to protect consumers from fraud and discriminatory business practices, ensure data privacy, and regulate credit and pricing practices in New York. Previously, she was the Chair of the Subcommittee on Emerging Workforce that oversees workforce development programs and identifies the needs of New York's workforce. Since then, Assembly Member Rozic has championed bills creating flexibility in the workplace, fair practices for work shifts, pay equity, and increased entrepreneurship in underserved communities. Most recently, she authored a new law to ease work schedules for state employees and expand current flexible workplace practices. In 2017, Assembly Member Rozic was the chair of the Task Force on Women’s Issues. In 2020 she was the Chair of the Assembly's Office on State-Federal Relations. 

Assembly Member Rozic also serves on the Assembly’s Ways & Means; Labor; Correction; and Corporations, Authorities and Commissions Committees. She is a member of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus and the Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force.

In Queens, Assembly Member Rozic is focused on serving day to day needs and fighting for key quality of life issues in her district. In Albany, Assembly Member Rozic is an outspoken advocate for working and middle class families, immigrant communities, and students, and she has already sponsored and passed legislation aimed at revitalizing New York’s environment, expanding government transparency, and strengthening the state’s workforce development system. She is also committed to social justice, equality and opportunity for all.

Assembly Member Rozic was born in Jerusalem and raised in Queens, where she dedicated herself to public service at an early age. Prior to her election, she was Chief of Staff to Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh, a role that allowed her to help protect senior centers and programs from drastic cuts, increase parkland and open space, expand neighborhood bus service, and bring much-needed reform to Albany by pushing for the revamping of city elections and instituting of public financing for state elections. Assembly Member Rozic also served as a member of Community Board 8 and as a member of the Townsend Harris High School Alumni Association.

In 2013, Assembly Member Rozic was named as a Rising Star on City & State’s annual list of the Next Generation of Political Leaders for becoming an influential force in New York State politics as a young elected official. Assembly Member Rozic was also selected as one of The Jewish Week's 36 Under 36. She has been a featured speaker at Running Start’s Young Women’s Political Summit, IGNITE's Young Women's Political Mobilization Conference, Bella Abzug Leadership Institute, Sadie Nash Leadership Project, State Innovation Exchange (SiX) Conference, and at the American Association of University Women‘s Elect Her: Campus Women Win Initiative. She was a finalist for the first-ever EMILY’s List Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award. Assembly Member Rozic was selected to participate in the Lindsay Fellowship Program’s Inaugural Class of 2017 under CUNY's Institute for Local and State Governance as well as Governing Magazine’s Women in Government Leadership Program Class of 2017.

A graduate of New York University, Assembly Member Rozic proudly calls Fresh Meadows home.

Renée N. McLaughlin is the Product Owner of GCA’s Cybersecurity Toolkits which improve the capacity and resilience of identified user communities. Ms. Mclaughlin has more than 28 years of executive and management experience in both the public and private sectors and has brought these skills to GCA since 2015. She oversees the development of new cybersecurity tools and solutions to fulfill GCA’s vision of a secure, trustworthy Internet that enables social and economic progress for all.

Prior to joining GCA, Ms. McLaughlin served as the Executive Director of the U.S. Cyber Challenge, housed within the Center for Internet Security (CIS), where she was responsible for the strategic development and management of all aspects of USCC. She spent seven years as an executive with a Washington, DC homeland security consulting firm where she was instrumental in the development of the organization, shaping its programs and initiatives and guiding its rapid growth. 

She also practiced law in Upstate New York for seven years, primarily as a criminal defense attorney at both the state and federal level, before moving to Washington, DC in 1999. There she joined the New York State Governor's Federal Affairs Office as Legislative Counsel where she remained for almost five years. During that time, she fostered collaborative partnerships with representatives from Congress, the Administration, and other key stakeholders to advance the State's legislative goals and policies. 

Ms. McLaughlin earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the State University of New York at Albany and a Juris Doctor from Albany Law School at Union University.

Craig Farrar is a Director of Financial Services Programs at the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS). He manages and supervises a team of IT/Cybersecurity examiners within the Cybersecurity Division and was instrumental in the recent development of DFS’s Cybersecurity and Information Technology Baseline Risk Questionnaire (CIBRiQ) as part of an agency-wide initiative to modernize regulatory supervision and examination approaches.

As a Director, Mr. Farrar supervises DFS-regulated entities on IT, Cybersecurity, and Part 500 compliance. Mr. Farrar is also an IT Examination instructor for the Conference of State Banking Supervisors (CSBS) and serves as a cryptocurrency SME within his agency. He has over 11+ years of combined enterprise risk management and examination experience, specializing in analysis of cybersecurity and virtual currency risks in the financial services industry.

Mr. Farrar graduated from the University at Albany with an MBA in Information Technology Management and a graduate certificate in Information Security. He also holds several industry certifications, including ISACA’s Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), CSBS’s Certified Information Systems Examiner (CISE) and Certified Cyber Security Examiner (CCSE), and a Chainalysis Cryptocurrency Fundamentals Certificate (CCFC).

Margarette Martin is a Director of Financial Services Programs at the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS). As a director, Ms. Martin oversees the Cybersecurity Division's daily activities related to NAIC, URSIT, and Part 500 examinations. Ms. Martin is also responsible for coordinating and managing the Division's examination resources, including examination procedures, work programs and trainee development.

Ms. Martin has over 20 years of combined financial services experience in bond analysis, BSA/AML compliance and cybersecurity. Prior to coming to DFS she worked at bond rating agencies and an investment bank in various capacities, developing and implementing risk management monitoring programs of securities and loan portfolios.  Ms. Martin joined DFS in 2015 as an examiner in the Licensed Financial Services Unit focusing on Money Transmitters.

Ms. Martin graduated from CUNY with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and a Masters in Industrial and Labor Relations.

More information about this speaker will be made available soon.

William Peterson is an Assist Deputy Superintendent of Cybersecurity Supervision at the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS). He manages the examination teams for the newly created Cybersecurity Division.

As an Assistant Deputy, Mr. Peterson supervises DFS-regulated entities on IT, Cybersecurity, and Part 500 compliance. Mr. Peterson also is an IT examiner instructor for CSBS. He has over 15 years of cybersecurity experience within the financial services and healthcare industries, operating as a cybersecurity engineer and information security officer.

Mr. Peterson graduated from Siena College and has a graduate certificate in Information Assurance from Regis University. He also holds several industry certifications from ISACA, CompTIA, Cisco, and Microsoft.

Adrienne A. Harris was nominated to lead the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) by Governor Kathy Hochul in August, 2021 and confirmed by the New York State Senate on January 25, 2022.

Superintendent Harris began her career as an Associate at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York City representing a number of U.S. and non-U.S. based corporations in various forms of litigation and regulatory matters, before accepting a position at the United States Department of the Treasury under President Obama.

While at the Treasury Department, Superintendent Harris served as a Senior Advisor to both Acting Deputy Secretary and Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Mary Miller, and Deputy Secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin. Her work ranged from financial reform efforts to identifying solutions to the student loan crisis, analyzing the nexus between foreign investment and national security, and working to promote financial inclusion and health in communities throughout the country.

Following her time at the Treasury Department, Superintendent Harris joined The White House, where she was appointed as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, as part of the National Economic Council. In this role, she managed the financial services portfolio, which included developing and executing strategies for financial reform and the implementation of Dodd-Frank, consumer protections for the American public, cybersecurity and housing finance reform priorities.

After leaving the White House in January 2017, Superintendent Harris went on to serve as General Counsel and Chief Business Officer at States Title, Inc. (now DOMA), which provides a more simple and affordable closing experience for homebuyers.

Prior to being nominated, she also served as a Professor and as Faculty Co-Director at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy's Center on Finance, Law and Policy at the University of Michigan, as well as a Senior Advisor at the Brunswick Group in Washington, D.C.